11/23/23

 Thursday, November 23, 2023

Thanksgiving Day

In bed around 9:15, awake at 1:40, onto the lzb till 2:35 and then up, let Lilly out, 36° and a high of 41°, clear conditions tonight and morning, then partly cloudy, wind WSW at 13 mph, 10/15/26.  Sunrise at 6:54, sunset at 4:21, 9+27.

Treadmill; pain.  Slight twinges on the lzb. Modest pain during the day.  3rd day of 3X3 Advil: 0500, 1200, & 1900.  I did a 30-minute full-body seated workout on YouTube which was worthwhile but I may have overdone it, especially of stressing the adductors in light of CPP.  I had quite a bit of pain temporarily when I got up from my chair.  I was reminded again of the weakness in my left hip and upper thigh muscles, much more than my right hip and upper thigh.  I got on the treadmill at @3:45.  25:01 & 0.57.  I may have overdone it with the 30-minute workout; I am a bit tender this evening.😞

Text message to Andy this morning:  Good morning, Son.  We’re out of circulation today.  Geri is about to start day 4 of her respiratory illness which I have been calling bronchitis but am now wondering whether it may be COVID or RSV or another respiratory influenza. She’s still congested and coughing.  The fever is gone but our home oximeter tells us her blood situation is low.  I haven’t come down with whatever it is yet and I’m keeping my fingers crossed and thankful that the VA has me pumped up with vaccines (7 total COVID vaccinations so far plus RSV, shingles, pneumonia, and flu.)  Geri’s had the COVID and RSV vaccinations this fall but not the flu shot yet;  it was scheduled for yesterday ironically.  In any case, we’re quarantining today and will miss your lunch and David’s dinner.  We’ll be receiving a ‘meal on wheels’ from David’s house this afternoon.  I hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving.  You all deserve it.   And best wishes to all the Hoangs who will be gathering today.❤️ 

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Geri's malady, whatever it is, has really taken the wind out of her sails.  She's been out of commission for 3 days.

Democrats, Indians, and Caste Discrimination.  Gavin Newsome has vetoed a California bill that would have banned discrimination based on caste.  The bill was pushed by progressive Democrats concerned about high-caste Indians invidiously discriminating against lower-caste Indians.  The high-caste Indians, including wealthy donors to Democratic causes and candidates, say there is no discrimination and therefore no need for the law.  Lower caste Indians say there is and so the Dems are pulled in opposite directions.  Yet another example of how, in America, caste, class, and race are, at best, complicated social and political realities to deal with and how, in America, money talks.  The saga of this bill, and Gavin Newsome's veto of it, demonstrates how whorish and venal American political 'leaders' can be.  The bill passed the California Assembly 55-3 and the California Senate 31-5.  Both houses are controlled by Democrats but the bill received bipartisan support.  Nonetheless, Gavin vetoed it because 'it was duplicative of existing law.'  Real reason?  Gavin was personally lobbied by at least two high-caste and wealthy Indian Democratic donors, Ajay Jain Bhutoria, former deputy co-chair of the Democratic National Committee, and Ramesh Kapur, another DNC big Democratic donor.  Both high-caste, wealthy and powerful Indian Americans threatened Newsome with withholding financial and political support if he signed the bill protecting lower-caste Indians.  Guess what?  Despite the near-unanimous bipartisan and bicameral legislative support for the bill, Newsome vetoed it.  Let us remember America's Golden Rule: He who has the gold makes the rules.

LTMW at 6:30 a.m., I see a neighbor driving down Wakefield Court on a mission.  Odds are that it's one of our physician neighbors off to make his or her rounds visiting patients who are hospitalized this morning, perhaps hoping to be released to go home for Thanksgiving.  I think of my father who was required to stay overnight at Columbia-St. Mary's after having his gall bladder removed.  Even in his 80s, he seemed to run down the hospital corridor in his desire to get out of there.  Also, I see that the tube feeder I filled two days ago with sunflower and safflower seeds is down only one inch, reinforcing my suspicion that there has been a raptor in the neighborhood, perhaps a kestrel or Cooper's hawk.  In any case, this morning there is brisk business at the feeder as one chickadee after another arrives for breakfast a few minutes before sun-up.  The finches show up later with song sparrows/pine siskins.  A FedEx truck drives by on County Line Road; they make residential deliveries on Thanksgiving?!?

Janine Geske commented on my FB posting yesterday about JFK's assassination:  "Janine Geske - I never heard this story. That is amazing.  I just remember that our Cedarburg Lutheran church did not memorialize that Catholic president—despite those of us in high school were very upset."  I replied:

It's hard to remember today how very dark the early 60s were, years that were really an extention of the 50s, of Joe McCarthy, the John Birch Society, of the assassination of Freedom Riders in the Deep South, of our brush with nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis, of JFK and RFK deploying 20,000 troops to enable James Meredith to attend Ole Miss, and of the distrust of the patriotism of Catholic office-holders who were said to take orders from the Pope.. Today we're inclined to think of 'the 60s' as the era of 'drugs, sex, and rock 'n roll,' of Haight-Ashbury and free love, of Jefferson Airplane and Bob Dylan, and of anti-Vietnam demonstrations and violence, but all that came later and now many conservative Catholics join hands with many Evangelicals in a united effort to Make America Great Again. Those of us who lived through those days bear witness to the fact that they weren't all that great.

Wild turkeys are disappearing, and Thanksgiving has nothing to do with it.  An article by Dino Grandoni in this morning's WaPo: "Wild turkeys are on the decline in many parts of the country, baffling biologists who study the gobblers that Benjamin Franklin once lauded as a “Bird of Courage.”

For those living in areas where there are so many turkeys they cause traffic jams and raid grain silos, the idea that turkey numbers are actually dropping may seem far-fetched."  You couldn't tell there is a decline by our birds on Wakefield Court.  It's hard not to admire these birds; I certainly do.  If we were to lose them  I would consider it a big loss.  As I write this, I am recalling a day when Anh and I took an exploratory walk in the bog behind our house in the Town of Saukville.   We came upon a wild turkey hen roosting on her eggs (Is this a proper usage?) at the base of a big cedar tree.  The bird didn't fly away from her eggs until we were hard upon her and she did so probably to distract us from her vulnerable eggs, a variation of kildeer behavior.  In any event, I don't know who was more frightened by the loud flapping of feathers on the seemingly huge bird only a couple of feet in front of us, the hen or Anh and me.  We were sorry to have disturbed her sacred incubating, gazed at the precious eggs for a moment, and moved away, chastened.

A year ago I wrote "What I think of when I feel guilty about spending money on art supplies and suchlike.

GREEN BAY ‒ One — perhaps the only — benefit from the Green Bay Packers losing six of the last seven games is tickets becoming more affordable.  The average get-in price for two of the Packers' remaining six games is below $100 and all but one dropped in the last week after the Packers lost to the Tennessee Titans at Lambeau Field on Thursday. Prices are determined by averaging the lowest prices at 10 secondary market sites.  The average lowest price for the Packers game in Philadelphia on Sunday was $197 on Monday, down from $255 last week.

. . . . . . .

The cost of the box seat ticket to last Saturday's MSO concert that Geri attended with Caela was just under $100.  I don't doubt that attending the Brahms & Shostakovich concert was worth it  (if you enjoy their very different musical styles) but I'm mindful that it is two hours or so of enjoyment (for those who are into Brahms and Shostakovich, or into being seen at the symphony) followed by - maybe - a faint memory.  Ditto professional and college athletic events.  One can acquire a lot of paint, brushes, and/or canvas for the cost of those tickets.

Long FaceTime call from Sarah and Christian.  Very pleasant chat about this, that, and the other things.  She will be returning to the States again in January.  They will be vacationing in Thailand over Christman,  including a 3 day cooking school. 

Sharon and her sister picked up Geri's pumpkin pies at 11, along with a lot of freshly whipped whipped cream.  We'll get a 'meals-on-wheels' delivery of Thanksgiving scrumptiousities later.

The State of America on this Thanksgiving Day.  From Thomas Edsall's op-ed in today's NYT: "The Roots of Trump's Rage."

Brian Klaas, a political scientist at University College London, captured the remarkable nature of the 2024 presidential election in an Oct. 1 essay, “The Case for Amplifying Trump’s Insanity.”

Klaas argued that the presidential contest now pits

a 77-year-old racist, misogynist bigot who has been found liable for rape, who incited a deadly, violent insurrection aimed at overturning a democratic election, who has committed mass fraud for personal enrichment, who is facing 91 separate counts of felony criminal charges against him and who has overtly discussed his authoritarian strategies for governing if he returns to power

against “an 80-year-old with mainstream Democratic Party views who sometimes misspeaks or trips.”   

“One of those two candidates,” Klaas noted, “faces relentless newspaper columns and TV pundit ‘takes’ arguing that he should drop out of the race. (Spoiler alert: It’s somehow not the racist authoritarian sexual abuse fraudster facing 91 felony charges.)”

Klaas asked:

What is going on? How is it possible that the leading candidate to become president of the United States can float the prospect of executing a general and the media response is … crickets?

How is it possible that it’s not front page news when a man who soon may return to power calls for law enforcement to kill people for minor crimes? And why do so few people question Trump’s mental acuity rather than Biden’s, when Trump proposes delusional, unhinged plans for forest management and warns his supporters that Biden is going to lead us into World War II (which would require a time machine), or wrongly claims that he defeated Barack Obama in 2016? . . . . 

Klaas of University College London concluded that a crucial factor in Trump’s political survival is the failure of the media in this country to recognize that the single most important story in the presidential election, a story that should dominate all others, is the enormous threat Trump poses:

The man who, as president, incited a violent attack on the U.S. Capitol in order to overturn an election is again openly fomenting political violence while explicitly endorsing authoritarian strategies should he return to power. That is the story of the 2024 election. Everything else is just window dressing.

Steve and Nikki arrived at @ 5 p.m. with our 'meals on wheels" and stayed until about 6 when they headed back to Chicago in the dark holiday traffic.  They have both been doing volunteer work at the Woodlawn  Food Pantry on Chicago's southeast side on Saturdays and enjoying it.   As usual, we shared some of our "leftie" thoughts while we were here.  They also described the terrible situation in Chicago with the flood of immigrants and the lack of housing and other resources to care for them.